LILAH PATE

5' ELEVEN''
21 hours ago
6 min read

“It’s a very exciting new chapter,” the budding, multi-hyphenate creative, Lilah Pate, explains from her new apartment in London, where she has just moved while filming a new movie. Once a theatre student at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Lilah is currently on professional leave, pursuing her acting career across the pond in the bright lights of the Big Smoke for the first time.

Words by Ella Mansell.

Photographed by Oliver Oglesby. Styled by Karen Munnis. Makeup by Eoin Whelan using Armani Beauty. Hair by Charles Stanley using Oribe. Digital and Photographer assisted by George Cabré. Styled assisted by Afra Nur Uğurlu. Lilah appears courtesy of Imprint PR.

Being in a new place doesn’t seem to phase Lilah, who grew up travelling all over the place. In fact, it excites her, having spent all of her recent free time soaking up the stages of London’s West End. “Theatre re-lights the fire of why I do all this. There is nothing like the energy of experiencing art in real time with other people. I definitely see theatre coming back around in my future,” she enthuses.

As the daughter of American screenwriter, director, and producer Jonas Pate, Lilah grew up all over the world, travelling for her parents’ work. Before hitting her teens, she had lived in Los Angeles, Cape Town, Austin, Texas, both Charleston and Wilmington in North Carolina, New York City, Barbados, Toronto, and had spent two summers in Vancouver. "Travel is so important. Meeting new people is so important,” Lilah explains. “You can get lost in your own echo chamber where you live. Getting to know different states, different countries, different types of humans, and different environments is very helpful as an actor because you need to have an understanding of all different types of people.”

When she turned 13, her parents moved the family from Los Angeles to North Carolina for the first time without work in mind, but rather for a lifestyle shift. “I am thankful for all of the opportunities I had when I was young in Los Angeles, but I believe these competitive environments take away some of your innocence and the playfulness of childhood.” Meanwhile, over in North Carolina, “it felt almost like the Pogue lifestyle in Outer Banks: spending time on a boat with friends; no phones outside; biking to each other’s houses. It was about being able to be kids for much longer, and prioritising this slower-paced lifestyle,” Lilah muses.

Having grown up around film sets, Lilah was no stranger to the behind-the-scenes world of cinema and television. Still, her parents were careful not to push her into the industry too early, not letting her pursue acting professionally until (almost) adulthood. “I'm very grateful for this because I was able to focus on my craft outside of the world's opinion,” she explains. However, at just 22 years old, Lilah Pate has starred in some of the buzziest television series of our time, including the romantic comedy The Summer I Turned Pretty, the adventure-packed teen drama Outer Banks, and the newly released teen drama The Runarounds. Lilah’s onscreen presence is growing rapidly, and she is starting to distance herself from her family’s influence and film sets – where it all began. “I knew from early on that film was what I wanted to do. I always said that I would make it work, I would figure it out with school – I would do anything. I wanted to be there.”

Many of her roles revolve around “coming of age” moments and the often messy emotions and relationships that come with them, times that aren’t too far from Lilah’s own memory, helping her to inform her performance. “Those ‘coming of age’ moments are about discovering yourself outside of the people and places that surround you,” she says. “I feel like I am constantly growing at getting to know myself. I learn new things every day,” adding that, “acting is about being present”. When it comes to her acting process, Lilah is thoughtful and methodical. When approaching a character, Lilah makes sure to read the script several times – including the scenes where her character does not appear – in the aim of finding “the emotional truth” of who she is playing. But once on set, she lets the preparation go: “I don't have a preplanned response to another character’s lines. My response is based on their delivery, their body language. I want to be fully in the scene.”

For Lilah, performance is just one piece of the creative puzzle. At heart, she’s a storyteller, whether through acting, writing, directing, or music. “Whenever anything happened to me in my life, my first instinct was to write a poem, or write a song, or write a short story, draw something, make a little movie,” she says. “Art is my outlet – my way of regulating my emotions by channelling them into something else.”

Lilah’s connection to storytelling is rooted in something deeply personal: her empathy. “I feel very, very deeply, and I have from a very young age,” she says. “It has proven hard at times because I can drain myself easily by taking on other people’s emotions.” A book called The Healed Empath helped her manage the emotional toll. Still, she sees this trait as a gift, as a way to “give each of my characters justice,” especially in the creative industry. “I think what separates humans from other species is our ability to tell stories, and to make people feel connected and less alone. There is nothing more important.”

Her directorial debut came almost accidentally, born from a creative lull during filming The Runarounds. “There would be some weeks where I would only work three days a week, and I'm a person who can't sit still,” she says. “I just really wanted the opportunity to direct. I needed to prove it to myself.” The result was a short film based on a poem she wrote during her freshman year of college about a love interest. “It was all-consuming and beyond painful at the time,” she says of the experience that inspired it. “But I knew I wanted to direct. And there's kind of no way to really teach yourself unless you just do it.”

The short film, although yet to be unreleased, has been accepted into several major film festivals. Lilah, however, decided to turn them down because she wouldn’t be able to attend the screenings. Although film festivals were never the intention when she first ideated the project “this film means everything to me. It’s kind of like a baby.”

On being behind the camera after starting her career in front of it, Lilah enthuses, “I don’t know if I’ve ever felt as alive as I did when I was directing.” Her influences include auteurs like Greta Gerwig and films that explore human emotion in subtle, poignant ways. “Films like Marriage Story and Before Sunrise fuel my artistic fire. Films that tap into authentic moments from real life – not big gimmicks or stunts – those are the ones that move me and those are the stories I’d like to tell.”

While acting and directing drive her professionally, music is something altogether different, something “freeing”, something that came back to the forefront of Lilah’s life while filming the newly released The Runarounds which follows the story of a group of Wilmington, North Carolina high school graduates who form a band (the actors are a real band outside of the new series) and all of the bonds that come with making music together. “I was working on an EP to release and had planned to drop it the day The Runarounds came out,” she says. “Then I booked the movie I’m currently filming – another blessing – and so the music has been postponed for now.” Still, she has a clear goal in mind: “My goal is to create a niche group of people who can connect to my music: see it and love it. That would be incredible.”

As for what’s next? “I can’t wait to see where my career takes me around the world,” Lilah explains, still in a rush about how quickly her life switched from a final year at university to filming a movie in London. But still, Lilah carries a deeper motivation that keeps her grounded: “I understand the amount of privilege I’ve been given in this lifetime, and I don’t want to waste that.”

This interview is inside The CINEMA Issue 15. Purchase your copy here.